Posted on 02/19/2009 11:27:02 PM PST by CutePuppy
Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance reform, hailed as a national model by top Democrats, is coming under fire from the political left. That raises doubts as to whether universal coverage supporters can overcome internal divisions.
Commonwealth Care mandated that everyone in the state buy health insurance or face a tax penalty. Those who did not receive insurance via their employer could buy individual coverage through a state-managed "connector." Individuals unable to afford private insurance got subsidized coverage.
Most businesses had to provide coverage or pay a penalty.
Proposed reforms by both President Obama and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., borrow heavily from the Massachusetts model, as does one being worked on by the staff of Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
Strange Bedfellows
But Public Citizen and Physicians for a National Health Program released a report this week calling the program flawed due to its cost, lack of access to care, and the remaining number of uninsured.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, said the report "shows that (Commonwealth Care) isn't working."
Free-market experts have been making many of the same points for years.
"I completely agree with their critique," said Greg Scandlen, president of Consumers for Health Care Choices at the Heartland Institute.
But whereas Scandlen and other conservative critics want less government involvement, Public Citizen and PNHP want America to adopt a single-payer system, in which the government is the primary if not the only health care payer.
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(Excerpt) Read more at beta.investors.com ...
Can someone explain to me how after we’ve spent a trillion dollars on this stimulus, we still don’t have universal healthcare?
So Romney-Care is disliked by both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Who ever saw that coming?... /S
The meaning of “universal” in health care is not about who will receive it, it’s about who is going to pay for rationed medical services.
"The problem is you can't fix the health care system with what President Obama has placed on the table, or with what we've done in Massachusetts, or what Baucus and Kennedy are talking about," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the report and co-founder of PNHP.
Just like HillaryCare boondoggle, if anyone still remembers that:
"It definitely weakens it," said Scandlen. "There is a sharp divide among the Democrats. We saw that same divide during the Clinton fight (over health care reform in 1994). The single-payer people were never satisfied with anything less than single-payer."
2009 is a race to the bottom.
We are broke, so lets spend more...
Stupid is as stupid does...
Because government has no right to force Universal healthcare on everyone. We have freedom of choice. Because physicians have a choice who they want to work for and it is not the government or they would join the VA hospitals or military.
And because most of us do not want to pay for illegals as we get rationed on our care so that we can make room for the massive influx of patients.
Not in my family, thank you! I will pay our premiums to insure our health and choices.
My sister is still paying monthly fines because she has not signed up for health insurance.
Romney-care tanks!
Mitt Romney gaffaws with fellow Democrats as he corruptly sells out conservatives and the GOP
for his latest DNC masters, after he installs socialized medicine (RomneyCARE=HillaryCARE).
ONLY Chameleon, carpetbagger, RINO, conservative-pretender Mitt Romney
has ever won the distinction of imposing upon an enslaved electorate,
without a single citizen's vote ("the Romney-Way(TM)"), BOTH Gay Marriage and Socialized Medicine.
Only a fool, a lawyer, or a stooge, would deny that Romney ran the most liberal Governorship, ever, anywhere.
Can someone explain to me how after we’ve spent a trillion dollars on this stimulus, we still don’t have universal healthcare?
That was for wealth redistribution to the blacks, not your health.
The way it will work is this:
Physicians and Hospitals take note.
First everyone will have medical care forced on them by the state. The government knows they will never be able to fund it completely, but have to get it implemented first.
Then, like in Great Britain, they will institute a fee schedule for the services they will pay for, and the amount they will pay. At first the compensation to physician and hospitals will be adequate, but it will eventually become too expensive.
The government will then mandate a reduction in compensation for each procedure. The physicians and hospitals will then be told to take it or leave it.
At a later date the physicians and hospitals will be told that they cannot charge the patient more then the health care pays or risk fines, and/or imprisonment.
Alternative treatment will range from mandatory non-treatment, to the cheapest useless treatment that does not work. If you are judged to be terminal coverage for expensive therapy will be denied.
Bring it on, I want free halth care.
.....hailed as a national model by top Democrats,.....
and one seriously Republican presidential candidate
"A final criticism the 19-page report offers is that the reform is financially unsustainable, as it does "nothing about a major driver of high health care costs, the overuse of high-technology care such as CT scanners and surgeries, and the underdevelopment of primary care." "Himmelstein said that if the reform plan looked like the Massachusett's reform he probably would prefer the status quo. He believes the reform has made most vulnerable patients in Massachusetts worse off."
I’m not saying funding universal health care is good fiscal policy, but if we are going to fund a $1 trillion for anything, I would much rather have bought insurance premium vouchers for poor people (RomneyCare) rather than spending $1 trillion to build roads in New Mexico that we don’t need.
The Democrats just want an issue so Michael Moore can make a documentary film (BTW, Bush’s first cousin Ken Rafferty showed Michael Moore how to make films). Republicans like Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney, even if you disagree with their solutions, actually have taken steps to try to fix the problem of sick people not having health care.
RomneyCARE rations care because PCPs are not gone. Stupid.
RomneyCARE brings criminal illegals to the ER. Stupid.
RomneyCARE buts the gov’t in charge of medical care. Stupid.
.
Too bad fascist Romney never let anyone vote,
but then that is the way of the Carpetbagger Romney.
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